Thursday, June 01, 2006

There are often unspoken issues in library meetings that everyone knows exist, but that no one wants to address. Instead, librarians tend to talk around the real problems without getting to the root of it all. Examples include our desperate grasping for relevancy, our reliance on pitiful software vendors, ineffective management, etc. Any such issue is often referred to as "the elephant in the room." Or "the elephant in the corner." And sometimes the elephant is pink. Or purple.

One good way to force everyone in the meeting to address the unspoken issue is to come up with creative things to call it. Put your heads together and brainstorm. Here are some ideas to get you started...

the dead elephant on the table

the pink moose in the corner

the 300 lb. gorilla at the door

the turd in the breadbox

Once you've reached consensus on a clever thing to call it, addressing the problem will be a piece of cake. Just don't feed the cake to the elephant.